If We Must Die Claude McKay’s life was displayed through his poetry usually examining conflicts coming from an outsider point of view. The significance of Claude McKay was that he was a black man who had the desire to write out of a traditional literary heritage. In Claude McKay’s “If We Must Die,” the true meaning between his lines of his work lays an indication as a dominant motivator for the Harlem Renaissance movement. McKay resisted characterization and opposed his standpoint of the Harlem

The tone of “If We Must Die” conveys inspiration, while the tone of “Harlem” is frustration which indicates the difference between the poets’ attitudes toward racial oppression. In the first eight lines of “If We Must Die”, the speaker insists on dying nobly. By stressing the last words of these lines: “hogs”, “dogs”, “lot” and “shed”. Readers might experience a strong feeling that the speaker and his allies will die as heroes. The use of an exclamation point in line eight, “Shall be constrained

Claude McKay's If We Must Die One of the most influential writers of the Harlem Renaissance was Jamaican born Claude McKay, who was a political activist, a novelist, an essayist and a poet. Claude McKay was aware of how to keep his name consistently in mainstream culture by writing for that audience. Although in McKay’s arsenal he possessed powerful poems. The book that included such revolutionary poetry is Harlem Shadows. His 1922 book of poems, Harlem Shadows, Barros acknowledged that this poem

After the Red Summer of 1919, in which the Klu Klux Klan executed numerous hate crimes, Claude McKay published his response in “The Liberator”, a well-known anti-slavery newspaper, entitled “If We Must Die”. Claude McKay utilized point of view, tone, rhyme scheme, and figures of speech within “If We Must Die’ in order to urge the African American community to fight back against the racial inequality. Claude utilizes first person point of view in order to create a sense of unity. The African American

If We Must Die by Claude McKay Clearly provocative and even chilling, “If We Must Die” by Claude McKay stirs deep and powerful emotions in any who reads it. A poem inspired by violent race riots, it serves as a motivating anthem representative of an entire culture. Graphic and full of vengeance this poem is demanding action, not telling a story. McKay utilizes imagery to its fullest extent creating an end result which any man or woman, black or white, who has ever felt the hard and hateful

In the battlefield when fighting against death can be futile, Claude Mckay’s persona in the poem “If We Must Die” gives one last speech to motivate his subordinates for one last stand in order to change despair into the will to fight. Throughout the poem, Mckay utilizes smile, imagery, and diction to strengthen the speech and to portray the enemy as savages. The poem is written in iambic pentameter; but the poet varies the iambic pattern by using trochaic, spondaic, and anapestic feet to underscore

Will Ryan Ms. Powers American Literature April 7th, 2014 “If We Must Die” Analysis To analyze a poem like Claude McKay’s “If We Must Die”, one must first understand the context of the writing. At the time it was created, the Red Summer of 1919 was occurring. This was a revitalization of anti-racial feelings that swept across the United States, and the time period was characterized by an increase in hate crimes against African American communities. The casualties included dozens dead, hundreds of

While both poems address the issue of racial oppression, the settings of each poem reflect the poets’ solutions to their immediate situations. In the poem “If We Must Die”, it is clear that the people are at war. They are facing unknown and powerful enemies, so they will die eventually. The poet depicts a gruesome scene in which the soldiers “die” and “shed blood” to show how much suffering they have endured. The soldiers are exhausted and despairing since they know they have no chance to win. However